You stare at the terminal, the curl command hanging mid-response. Authentication failed. You know the drill – OpenID Connect, short-lived access tokens, refresh cycles. In most cases you’d patch it by hand or run a quick script. But now the task is clear: make OpenID Connect (OIDC) automation in shell scripting bulletproof.
OIDC isn’t just about logging into a web app. It’s a thin but critical layer over OAuth 2.0 that your CLI tools, build scripts, and automation pipelines now need to speak fluently. When you’re working in bash, zsh, or sh, the challenge is pulling tokens, refreshing them, and keeping them secure – all while avoiding human intervention.
First step: know your endpoints. Your identity provider’s .well-known/openid-configuration URL will tell you the authorization, token, and JWKS endpoints. Parse it with curl and jq so the shell script always knows where to fetch keys and tokens. Hardcoding is easy, but it’s a maintenance trap.
Then, script the token retrieval. OIDC token requests in shell typically use curl -X POST with the client_id, client_secret, grant_type, and either authorization_code or refresh_token. For automation, client_credentials grant is common, but beware – some APIs restrict it. Always check the provider’s policy.
Store tokens safely. Keep them out of process lists by passing them via stdin or secure env vars. Avoid writing them to disk unless encrypted. Short-lived access_token values can live for minutes or hours; refresh_token values live longer, but must be guarded even more tightly.